If you're looking for reasonably priced, high quality, handmade, original Celtic and Tribal jewelry, you've come to the right place! Having won many awards for jewelry design and with the birth of Celtic Craft, Joe Dunne has brought his exclusive line of Celtic and Tribal jewelry to America. Born in Kilkenny Ireland and having served a full apprenticeship in the world famed Kilkenny Design Workshops, Joe has traveled the world working as a goldsmith learning and teaching the fine art of the jewelry trade. His work has been featured in many magazines and in a documentary film about his hometown of Kilkenny a beautiful medieval city in south east Ireland Now settled and living in New Jersey USA, Joe's Celtic Jewelry designs are in big demand. Joe frequents festivals along the east coast of the United States and in places as far west as Dallas, Texas and St Paul, Minnesota. Joe attributes his success to a very simple formula: "value for money". "That's what the people want, I could get twice the price for my product" says Dunne. His jewelry is original, solid, handmade and is reasonably priced. Joe is coming out with new lines of his Celtic and Tribal jewelry constantly, which keeps him current among the top craftsman in the world.
Info about the jewelry:
Most of the jewelry designs on my website are my own with the exception of the Claddagh, the trinity knot and a few other Celtic symbols. The spiral is one of my favorites and I use it in a lot of my pieces. It has different meanings in different cultures, you can do a web search and get hundreds of explanations. The spiral is found throughout Ireland on headstones and monuments and it is thought that the symbol was not only an adornment but was there to ward off evil spirits. My Tribal designs are a major hit and are not specific to any particular tribe but a mixture of influences from the tattoos found on South Pacific islanders to ancient Irish script developed by the Irish monks at Iona Monastery in Donegal. I have combined some of these influences as Celtic / tribal in some of my pieces. Where possible I will give an explanation of each piece but sometimes a piece is just something that I had in my mind and couldn't wait to sit at the bench and make it. It's just a cool design.
Info about the Gold and Silver:
All gold is yellow in it's natural form, white gold is yellow gold alloyed with another precious metal like Nickel or palladium which gives it the white gold color. Various combinations of alloys result in different color gold's Red gold is fine gold with copper only, you can get green gold, rose gold, pale yellow, dark yellow, white, even purple which is alloyed with aluminum. Always remember the higher karat gold the higher amount of gold and the more you are going to pay. In Ireland we have 9 karat gold which to me is only glorified silver. Most of my two tone pieces are sterling silver with either 18K gold or 22K gold Also remember the higher Karat gold the richer deep gold color it will be. Fine gold (pure gold) has a specific gravity of 19.3 which is twice that of lead, making it twice as heavy as lead.
What is Sterling silver?
Pure Silver is called fine silver or 1000 silver and it's too soft for most manufacturing so to give it strength and durability it's alloyed with small quantities of copper. The amount of copper mixed in is normally 75 parts copper to 925 parts fine silver to make up 1000 parts total. This is sterling silver or .925 silver. Look for the .925 stamp or sterling stamp it means the same thing. Some countries use less silver and more copper up to recently it was common to get 600 silver meaning 600 parts silver to 400 parts copper. But it's no too common nowadays.